[blindreplay] Blog: Let’s Talk About Replay Media Catcher and HTTPS

From: "Petro T. Giannakopoulos" <petrogia@xxxxxxxxx>

To: <blindreplay@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Date: Sat, 17 May 2014 09:41:35 -0400

Let’s Talk About Replay Media Catcher and HTTPS
‎Yesterday, ‎May ‎16, ‎2014, ‏‎2:05:10 PM | debbie
Keeping up with the constant changes in streaming protocols is just the job for
Replay Media Catcher‘s Engineers. They like a challenge and frequently whip up
very smart solutions to very tough problems. If you’ve installed the most
recent version of Replay Media Catcher, you’ll see that we’ve made some great
improvements. And if you like to download streams from YouTube, then you’ve
likely seen the new prompt to install a CA certificate. So what’s that all
about? Have no fear! We’re here to break it down for you. Let’s get nerdy,
shall we?
YouTube and some other sites now stream their media over an HTTPS connection by
default. So what is HTTPS? Hyper Text Transfer Protocol Secure is the secure
version of http. Typically used when a secure connection is necessary. Like for
ecommerce transactions and such. When you connect to a website that is using
HTTPS, the session is encrypted with a Digital Certificate.
Let’s first look at how Replay Media Catcher downloads, then we’ll explain how
installing the CA Certificate helps it to do it’s job better. When you switch
on Replay Media Catcher, it starts sniffing the network traffic. Looking for
media to download. As you come across streaming video or music, Replay Media
Catcher decodes that network traffic and if it understands what it is seeing on
the network, it tries to detect and download the media based on intelligence
we’ve written for that protocol. Pretty slick, right? That’s how Replay Media
Catcher can download so much more without browser plugins. It simply does not
need them. It only listens to the network.
Let’s say you’ve switched on Replay Media Catcher’s monitoring and you’re
happily browsing along and decide to download the latest viral video on
YouTube. Remember we said that YouTube is now streaming their media over an
HTTPS connection.. SSL is the standard security technology for establishing an
encrypted link between a web server and a browser. When you see HTTPS in the
URL, you are using the SSL/TLS protocol to speak to that website. Replay Media
Catcher will then not understand that traffic and disregard it. That sounds
like bad news, right? Nope! Read on…
If you’re running Replay Media Catcher version 5.0.1.46 or later, you’ll notice
a new prompt when it first sees media from a site that is streaming over HTTPS.
This prompt explains that in order for Replay Media Catcher to scan for media
that is streamed over HTTPS, a CA certificate is required to be created. A CA
(Certificate Authority) is an authority in a network that issues and manages
security credentials.
You can choose to allow HTTPS scanning or not. If you choose no, Replay Media
Catcher will ignore any HTTPS streaming and you’ll be sad. That breaks my
heart. Say YES!
If you choose YES, (and we recommend you do) then Windows will prompt you to
install the CA certificate. Windows presents you with this:
The title of the window says “Security Warning”. Yeah, well…it’s not a problem.
Windows is just letting you know that a certificate is about to be installed.
Windows says that it cannot validate the certificate as actually being from
Replay Media Catcher, but have no fear. We have created a certificate called
Replay Media Catcher 5 SSL Scanner Root. Essentially, it allows Replay Media
Catcher to scan HTTPS traffic like that being served by YouTube for
downloadable media. It is absolutely safe. And you are not putting yourself or
your computer in any danger by installing it.
Don’t miss out on all the great streaming goodness that Replay Media Catcher
can download. It’s waaay smarter than any other streaming media downloader.
Guaranteed!
Don’t hesitate to contact us with any questions!
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